Our interview with Dilly Dally

By day three of WayHome Music & Arts Festival, the finish line is in sight. After early morning wakeup calls, days spent underneath the gruelling sun, and nights of sleeping on the ground, the urge to accept defeat is strong. However, there was reason to battle through on Sunday July 24 – and that reason came in the form of Toronto’s lovable stoner punks, Dilly Dally. Opening up the final day on the WayBright stage at 1:00PM sharp, frontwoman Katie Monks gnashed her teeth for a fiercely adoring crowd who were definitely all about the Dilly Life. Shortly after the set wrapped, Katie, Liz Ball (Dilly’s guitarist, founding member, and Monks’ best friend since high school) and I sat down in the shaded luxury of WayHome’s backstage area to catch up since Northern Transmissions last spoke with the band, prior to the release of their excellent debut record Sore last October.

Northern Transmissions: How are you guys doing? You played Capitol Hill (Block Party) in Seattle two days ago, how was that?

Liz Ball: So good.

Katie Monks: It was so good and beautiful. We played right before this band called Head Wound City.

LB: They’re this supergroup of the Blood Brothers, the Locust, and Nick Zinner from Yeah Yeah Yeahs. It’s what you would think it’d sound like. *imitates growling noises* It’s good though.

KM: I mean, like, maybe I got this lyric wrong but it’s cool regardless, what I thought it was. I filmed part of their set and was watching it on my phone, and it said “No more…” er, it said, “No more self defence” or something –

LB: Something like that.

KM: But I feel like it kind of meant “fuck having guns in America”, you know? It really hit me hard when I was thinking about it. So anyway, they’re just a punk band.

LB: Proper punk band.

NT: Good for you. You guys would definitely fit opening for them.

LB: Yeah, it was good. They all liked it.

KM: They really liked it, so it was so special. We were very starstruck. We’re just little teenagers here, we don’t know how we got here.
NT: I feel the same. How do you prefer playing festivals to that of a club setting?

KM: I think it’s all good, really.

LB: It’s all good.

KM: Outside is great. It feels good.

LB: I love playing outside. I love when you get that breeze when you’re sweaty and you’re like – *breathes sigh of relief*.
KM: Visually, it looks cool. There’s something really natural about it. But I mean, it’s nice to switch it up.

LB: And despite what people say, so far I’ve had great experiences with the sound. Even on stage, I can hear everything.
NT: You guys sounded really tight today. I only saw you ask to be turned up once. I guess it’s been almost a year now since Sore was released, which is crazy.

LB: A year in October.

NT: So it’s coming up on ten months which is nuts.

KM: That’s crazy. It’s like we had a baby. It’s weird because we didn’t put out anything, like an EP or anything, before so I think that a lot of people are still discovering the band which is special. We’re still touring and stuff, so it feels like it’s growing still.

NT: Which is so nice. You two (Katie and Liz) have been together forever making music with rotating members throughout the band. When did you really solidify your lineup?

KM: Just like, a couple years ago.

LB: It was kind of like a blessing in disguise. Our drummer was like “I want to do my own thing” and then we were like “Okay, I guess this will give us a kick in the ass to kind of get our shit together” and then we found Ben (drums) and Tony (bass) who are willing to be a part of the project.

KM: And we had to convince – I remember Tony too, we had to convince him a bit. He was like “I’m kind of busy” because he’s in another band, Peeling, who’s fucking awesome and everyone should check out. So we were like “Come on, just give us one show” and we did one show in Toronto at Handlebar and it was the best vibe.

LB: To this day, he says it’s his favourite show.

KM: Really? Awww, that’s so cute.

LB: He’s a sweetie.

NT: What’s your favourite Toronto venue? Handlebar is so small for you now.

LB: To play? I like to play the Danforth ’cause it’s big and it sounds good.

KM: We may or may not be able to play there, but yeah.

LB: We were banned but we’re not banned now.
NT: Why were you banned?!
LB: We were young.

KM: We were young and stupid and we got banned.

LB: But we will play Toronto sometime within the next end of the year.

KM: Very soon, and everyone should keep their ears and eyes open and their souls in the wind.

LB: I love playing Toronto shows. They’re always good, and they’ve just been getting bigger and bigger and more sold out. It feels good.

NT: It’s because you’re the true 6 Gods.

LB: *laughs* Fuck Drake. I don’t want to talk about Drake.

NT: Don’t worry, we won’t talk about Drake. Katie, you and Dave are obviously the power sibling duo. How do you two take inspiration from each other, in anyway?

KM: I mean, like, I’d say all of that stuff is pretty silent. But what’s really kind of held it all together, or helped us keep ourselves together, is having one another for support when we’re feeling lost in the industry and that’s it, really. When we kind of hit these walls, hit these moments where we’re freaking out for whatever reason – ’cause it’s easy to get inside your head about things. When you want something so bad and you’ve put so much of yourself into it, it’s easy to overthink stuff. We’re both pretty extroverted so we’ll hit each other up and be like “Alright, oh my god, I’ve been overthinking this thing.”

NT: That sounds like the ideal kind of relationship.

KM: It’s amazing. There was this show we played in Boston at the end of our last U.S. tour and my voice was the worst it’s ever been, which is not that bad, really. *laughs* It’s not really that bad, you know, I’d say I keep it pretty in tact considering the amount of weed I smoke. Anyway, it was a little shit that day and I was freaking out and wasn’t sure if I could even do the show, you know, ’cause I felt bad for all of the fans. I called up my brother and he was on tour at the same time, and he said “Katie, I was in the same spot as you two nights ago. You gotta go up there and trust your band and yourself to rock out harder than you’ve ever rocked out before. You express yourself with your guitar and your body and your face and you fucking give it all you can give it.” As we say here in Canada, as you guys know, you giv’er. You go up there and you giv’er. And so we all went up there and we gav’er and it was all fine. Everyone was happy and loved it, so it was beautiful.

NT: How do you take care of your voice?

KM: I sing like Sinead O’Connor and shit before shows and make weird noises sometimes. I don’t know, I try to stay away from cigarettes when I’m on tour. I’ve started trying to avoid weed on tour too.

LB: Not me. I smoke all the weed.

KM: Honestly, when I’m not smoking weed in spurts of my life, watching Liz smoke weed really helps me. Shoutouts to all of the fans who come to our shows and bring us weed. Shoutouts to all those people.

NT: Do you all smoke?

LB: Just the girls.

KM: Just the girls. We’re in High Times and the boys are in it too but straight up though, they don’t fucking smoke. It was just stupid.

NT: Do they never smoke? Seriously ever?

KM: They don’t ever! It doesn’t work with some people, you know.

LB: They’ve had their moments.

NT: How did you and Grouplove come to be on the tour together? It’s such a contrast but I feel like it’s going to work really, really well.

KM: Honestly, speaking of luck – they, for whatever reason, found out about the band, started posting about us on social media, came to our little, cute, sold out, small show in L.A. Fuck, I don’t even know if it was sold out, to be honest. But anyway, they came to our little dainty show and they’re just really, strangely passionate about the band, you know? It’s crazy. They were like “This is the only new record we’ve been listening to this last year.”

LB: They’ve been ramping us. They were like “We don’t know who you are, but we love you!” The picture got 3000 likes or something on their Instagram.
NT: They have a huge fanbase. Even when we were tweeting stuff about the tour, their fans would retweet and it would just blow up. It’s really awesome for you guys.

KM: Well, it’s so sick because they’re such lovely people and I feel like their whole band seemed to have happened quite naturally.

LB: It’s a fanbase that we haven’t really tapped into yet, I think. Like more of the poppy, mainstream stuff. So I’m excited to make new fans.

KM: Yeah, make new fans, win over some people. They’re going to be in shock at first but they’ll come around in the end.

LB: We’ll scare them at first but they’ll like it. They’ll learn about themselves and be like “Ohhh, this is magical and euphoric” and feel things in their private areas.

KM: Exactly.

NT: I feel like they’ll actually really dig you guys though. It’s a contrast, but it’s going to fucking work.

KM: It’s going to work!

NT: You guys are going to rev them all up and it’ll be awesome.

KM: That’s the whole Dilly Dream. We want all the fans. We want all the people out there, whoever you are, we just want you guys to get all stoked on being real. So that’s it.

LB: We try to help our buddies as much as we can, so it’s nice when a stranger reaches out and they’re like “We like you, we want to help you.”

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My name is Charles Brownstein and I was born in Montreal, Quebec. I presently live in Vancouver, BC.
I am a true lover of music, food, books, film, and stand-up comedy. Foremost it is music that I love, that is what drove me to create this site. I confess to liking Duran Duran and the Bee gees in my youth.I prefer In Utero to Nevermind and safe as milk instead of Trout Mask Replica.
Northern Transmissions is a Music website that features interviews from musicians and bands we love. We have interviewed so many of them, from The Drums to Destroyer. We review albums by from many labels around the world, including Merge, Sub pop, Bella union, Matador, 4AD, Rough Trade, Capture Tracks, Hardly Art, and many many more.
Hope you guys enjoy the website as much as we like working on it.

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